Lesson 11

*December 8 - 14

Vision FourSummer Fruit

Sabbath Afternoon
December 8

AMOS 8 GOES
FROM ONE THEME TO ANOTHER. First, it deals with the question of
bearing fruit, then it touches on those who have all the religious forms
without any of the spirit that should animate those forms; a problem, perhaps,
for Christians in all eras and all times. Next it brings up an interesting
question about salvation, that of forgiven sins that are no longer forgiven.
Then it touches on the issues in the final conflict before the end of the
world.

And, finally, it delves into the concept of there being a "famine" in the
land for hearing the "words of the Lord." It's an interesting week's worth
of lessons. Dig out what you can. Though we certainly aren't going to cover
all that could be said on these topics, you'll certainly leave with a few
things to think and pray about.

THE WEEK AT A GLANCE: Why is the image of fruit used to describe human
character? Can we be keeping all the rules and regulations of our religion
and yet miss the most important point about it? What does it mean that the
Lord will "forget" all our sins? What does it mean that He will "remember"
them? What does the Bible mean when it talks about a "famine" for "the words
of the Lord"? Can we be in a land of plenty and still be in dire need of
the Word?

MEMORY TEXT: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord
God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a
thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord"
(Amos
8:11).

*(Please study this week's lesson to prepare for Sabbath, December 15.)

Sunday December 9

BY THEIR FRUITS.

"Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer
fruit. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer
fruit. Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel;
I will not again pass by them any more. And the songs of the temple shall
be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies
in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence"
(Amos
8:1-3).

What kind of fruit is talked about here?

Early maturing fruit, used especially
of 'figs.' The purpose of this vision was to show that the people were ripe
for judgment, that God's forbearance was at an end. The divine long-suffering
had resulted only in the continuance of Israel's sin."The SDA Bible
Commentary, vol. 4, p. 979.

Look up each of the following texts. How does each one use the imagery
of fruit to make its point?

Notice how fruit is used in a dynamic manner, in that it represents something
in the process of change, of maturity, of ripeness, even decay. Fruit can
be sweet and wonderful, or rank and rotten. No wonder it's used in Scripture
in this manner to describe human beings and their actions.

In the context of today's lesson, read
John
15:5 and ask yourself, What kind of fruit am I bearing, and why? At
the same time, what's the danger of looking at our own fruit in determining
our standing with God? How can we strike a good
balance?

Monday December 10

SWALLOWING THE NEEDY AFTER SABBATH.

"Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the
land to fail, Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn?
and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and
the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may buy
the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the
refuse of the wheat?"
(Amos
8:4-6).

These verses reek with one of the greatest
and most common spiritual deceptions ever conjured up in Satan's brew of
demonic deceptions: religious formalism cloaking abuse of the most basic
religious principles. No doubt these people felt spiritually superior to
those who didn't keep the Sabbath or observe the feasts as strictly as they
did. After all, because they were observing these religious festivals, these
folk thought they were holy and thus didn't need to worry about little things
like honesty, greed, or helping the poor.

"The first day of the month. . . was devoted to religious service,
and apparently was a day on which all trade was suspended. . . . Here is
a striking example of a formal observance of sacred institutions, with no
true spirit of devotion. In their selfishness these apostates begrudged the
time their religious formalism demanded of them. Such worship becomes a curse
instead of a blessing."The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 4, p.
980.

These people wanted the Sabbath to end so they could immediately get back
to cheating their customers. How intrusive of the Sabbath to interfere with
their fraud! The irony is that when one understands the true meaning of the
Sabbath, when one truly keeps the Sabbath as God intended, it's hard to imagine
that person going out and cheating people, especially the poor.

Give an example from the New Testament where Jesus had to confront
this same problem. How did He respond?

What is it about the Sabbath that, if properly kept and understood, would
protect a Sabbath keeper from doing exactly what God condemns here in Amos?
In other words, what is the Sabbath all about, and why would understanding
what it is about protect us from falling into these same
sins?

Tuesday December
11

"SURELY I WILL NEVER FORGET."

This verse is amazing, terrible in severity,
yet painfully accurate in depicting basic biblical truth regarding salvation.
In the end, either all our sins are forgiven, forgotten, and obliterated,
or they will come back to haunt and condemn us. Either we face none of the
legal penalties for our sins or we face the full brunt of them all. Either
we walk away totally free from the legal consequences of our sin, or we are
destroyed under the oppressive weight of their consequences. Either God "forgets"
all our sins, or He "remembers" them all. There's no middle ground, no plea
bargain, no compromise.

Compare what God is saying in
Amos
8:7 with what He's saying in these verses: "I, even I, am he that blotteth
out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins"
(Isa.
43:25). "I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins
and their iniquities will I remember no more"
(Heb.
8:12). "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more"
(Heb.
10:17).

In the above verses, God promises to "forget" their sins, the idea being
that their sins will no longer be factored into how He regards these people.
These words are basically a poetic way of saying that when God forgives our
sins, He forgives them completely, even to the point where He no longer
"remembers" them. This is what happens when we are saved by Jesus Christ,
when His righteousness becomes ours by faith.

On the other hand, what
Amos
8:7 is talking about is, in a sense, what happens to those who don't
have the righteousness of Jesus covering them. The parable that Jesus told
in
Matthew
18 about the unforgiving servant reveals this principle: We are either
forgiven all our sins, or we must face the penalty for all our sins. Either
we have complete pardon or complete condemnation. Either our salvation is
total, or our ruin is total.

Study the parable of
Matthew
18 regarding the fate of the servant who had his debt forgiven
(vs.
27) but then ultimately lost that forgiveness. Some people have
a hard time with this concept, that of the nullification of a debt canceled;
yet, that seems to be what the parable says. How do we understand that
in light of the Cross and what Christ accomplished at the cross?

Wednesday December
12

"And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will
cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear
day"
(Amos
8:9).

A description of the day of the Lord
follows in
verse
9: "On that day,' says the Lord God, 'I will make the sun go down at
noon" (RSV). Amos, living in Palestine, saw the sun go down at noon on the
day of the Lord. Ellen White, nearly three millennia later and on the other
side of the world, was given a vision, described in The Great
Controversy, page 636, in which
she saw the sun come up at midnight when God intervenes in world history
to deliver His people.

How does the phrase "in that day" point to the final judgment prefigured
by Israel's day of judgment? (See the use of this phrase in such last-day
prophecies as
Isa.
4:1;
12:1,
4;
Joel
3:1,
18).

In
Amos
8:9, the prophet foretells events that will take place long after his
time.
Verses
9 and 10 point to the second coming of Christ in the day of final judgment.

Compare
Amos
8:10, which applied originally to the gloom and lamentation in Israel
at the fall of Samaria, to
Revelation
18:9-19, which describes the mourning of the entire world at the time
of God's judgment on last-day
Babylon.

"When the voice of God turns the captivity of His people, there is a terrible
awakening of those who have lost all in the great conflict of life. While
probation continued they were blinded by Satan's deceptions, and they justified
their course of sin. The rich prided themselves upon their superiority to
those who were less favored; but they had obtained their riches by violation
of the law of God. . . . Now they are stripped of all that made them great
and are left destitute and defenseless. They look with terror upon the
destruction of the idols which they preferred before their Maker. . . . The
rich bemoan the destruction of their grand houses, the scattering of their
gold and silver. . .

"The wicked are filled with regret, not because of their sinful neglect of
God and their fellow men, but because God has conquered."The Great
Controversy, p. 654.

Thursday December
13

FAINTING FOR THIRST.

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine
in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing
the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the
north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the
Lord, and shall not find it"
(Amos
8:11, 12).

The implications of these verses are
staggering. People seeking the "word of the Lord" and yet not able to find
it? How could the God who wants us all in heaven so badly that He died on
the cross allow a time when those who seek the "word" can be in a position
where they can't find it? What's going on here?

Whatever the exact meaning of the those texts in Amos, particularly in the
context of last-day events, there's an important principle applicable to
our immediate situation now. We can, through continually filling our minds
with junk, get to the point where the "word of the Lord" has no meaning to
us. We can become so dull, so insensitive to spiritual truths, that when
we hear them they can't penetrate our minds and hearts. That's why what we
read, what we watch, and what we think about can deaden us to truth so that
the effect is no different upon us than if we, in fact, didn't have access
to "the Word of God."

"Those who do not now appreciate, study, and dearly prize the Word of God
spoken by His servants will have cause to mourn bitterly hereafter. I saw
that the Lord in judgment will at the close of time walk through the earth;
the fearful plagues will begin to fall. Then those who have despised God's
Word, those who have lightly esteemed it, shall 'wander . . . to and fro
to seek the Word of the Lord and shall not find it'
(Amos
8:12). "Last Day Events,
pp. 234, 235.

The Christian life is a dynamic life: It's always in the process of change.
We can never remain static, for remaining static is another way of
saying we are not growing, and if we're not growing, we are, truly, moving
backward. Keeping this concept in mind, it is crucial that we be constantly
advancing in our walk with Christ. What do these verses in Amos say
to us, today, regarding our growth in Christ? Can there be a "famine"
for the Word even if we have a Bible in our home, or even in our hands?
Think this through and ask yourself, Can we be starving, even in a
land of plenty?

Friday December 14

Look once more at
Matthew
18, the story of the ungrateful servant. Can you see how it, in an indirect
manner, is linked to the investigative judgment? In other words, during the
judgment, our decision as to whether or not we are serving Christ is, once
and for all, finalized. If we, by faith, have Christ's righteousness covering
us, then, as Jesus says, "I will not blot out his name out of the book of
life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels"
(Rev.
3:5). On the other hand, if we are not converted, then it would appear
that our names are blotted out and Jesus doesn't confess us before the Father
and the angels. What
Matthew
18 implies, then, is that we can indeed lose our salvation. See if you
can find other verses that give the idea that we can reject our salvation.
At the same time, see if you can find some verses that seem to say the opposite.
How can we synthesize them so that we come to a balanced understanding of
this important truth?

2.

Read the last clause of
Matthew
10:22, about how those enduring to the end will be saved, particularly
in the context of the previous question. What added information does
verse
22 give regarding this important issue?

3.

Going back to the lesson on Monday, which dealt
with those who kept religious forms but were totally devoid of the spirit
of devotion behind those forms, read this quote by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
about the Sabbath: On this day, humankind "must say farewell to manual
work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and
will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with
the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care
for the seed planted in the souls. The world has our hands, but our
soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the
world, on the seventh we try to dominate the self."Abraham Joshua Heschel,
The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), p. 13. How
could these sentiments help free people from the sins that Amos was talking
about in
Amos
8:4-6?

SUMMARY:

Decision in the River, Part 1

Maria Antonieta de las Muhecas

Celedonio [sel-eh-DOH-nee-oh] swam hard against the swollen river's current.
His arms ached from fatigue, but he dared not stop, lest the current carry
him away. Alone and frightened, he searched for a sandbar where he could
rest. As he struggled to stay afloat, a sense of helplessness swept over
him. All he could do was pray. Then his feet touched the gravel edge of the
sandbar. He dragged himself out of the water and lay on the sand, shivering
and utterly exhausted.

When Celedonio's parents died, he went to live with his brother and sister.
Two years later his brother died, leaving Celedonio and his sister alone.
He experienced a series of illnesses that left him weak and in pain. He prayed
to his favorite saint for healing and made promises and offered sacrifices
to her, hoping to receive her blessing. But his symptoms did not go away.
Still the young man refused to give up. He began searching for God in other
churches, but all the different denominations confused him.

Then he met Luis, the pastor of a Protestant church. Luis taught him how
to pray directly to God in the name of Jesus. When Celedonio prayed as Luis
taught him, he began to feel better.

Luis asked Celedonio to go with him to find work. The two men left their
families behind and traveled to central Bolivia, where they had heard work
was available. They found a job planting crops beside a wide river. Every
evening they crossed the river in a canoe to the town where they stayed.

One evening no canoe came to take them across the river. It was almost sundown,
and the men had to get across before dark. They surveyed the rain-swollen
river and decided they could swim across. They put their clothes and their
valuables into a plastic bag, which Celedonio tied to his waist. Then they
jumped into the river.

Celedonio swam hard against the river's current. But the plastic bag dragged
in the water, slowing him down. He looked around for Luis, but he could not
see his friend anywhere. Celedonio feared he would not make it across the
river. Exhausted, he struggled to stay afloat. He found himself praying,
praying for forgiveness, as well as for safety. Suddenly the current swept
the plastic bag containing all of his belongings from his waist. A sense
of helplessness swept over him. Then his feet touched gravel. He dragged
himself onto the sandbar and collapsed, shivering and utterly exhausted.
For the moment at least, he was safe.

(Continued next week.)

Maria Antonieta de las Mnñecas is a Global Mission worker in
Portachuela, Bolivia.